


Salmon Crostini

by courtroses



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Angst, Cordelia cooks through the pain, Gen, cordelia isn't doing okay, whizzer in the hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 20:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11721741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courtroses/pseuds/courtroses
Summary: Cordelia knows she can’t help Whizzer at all. She can’t find the magical cure. She can’t make him feel better. Hell, she can’t even comfort him.So she cooks.





	Salmon Crostini

**Author's Note:**

> I'm kind of obsessed with writing for this musical haha :) 
> 
> This is my little Cordelia character study. Enjoy!

The temperature dial creaks quietly as Cordelia turns it to 400 degrees. Her fingers brush the side of the oven, eyes glancing down at the new model. Charlotte bought it for her a few months ago. Before all the shit hit the fan.

Cordelia blinks a few times and turns away from the oven.

She walks to the small kitchen island, grabbing the thin baguette she bought from the market that morning. She wills her hands to stop shaking as she slices the bread with her favorite serrated knife. 

Charlotte invited her to come visit Whizzer today. 

One slice comes out too thin. Cordelia puts it on the baking tray anyways.

They visited Whizzer a few days ago. Everyone did. Cordelia brought chicken soup. As if that’d cure the dying man.

Cordelia is careful to drizzle small streams of olive oil on the slices of thick, and one far too thin, bread. 

The blonde woman knows she can’t help Whizzer at all. She can’t find the magical cure. She can’t make him feel better. Hell, she can’t even comfort him. 

So she cooks.

She swallows thickly, grabbing the salt shaker. Upturning the shaker over the bread, her finger taps the bottom of the small glass container lightly. Small sprinkles of salt fall onto the bread. Cordelia forgets where she found the recipe, only remembering tearing it out of a magazine she saw last week. 

The magazine she got in the hospital waiting area.

Her hand jerks suddenly and an excessive amount of salt pours onto a slice of bread, forming a small patch of white granules on its surface. She wishes it fell onto the thin slice of bread so she had an excuse to throw it away.

Charlotte warned her that Whizzer wasn’t doing well. That she shouldn’t draw attention to his state. Cordelia’s hands had tightened around her thermos of soup, knuckles turning white.

The bread goes into the oven. Cordelia turns the timer to 8 minutes. She walks to the fridge, taking out the greek yogurt, cream cheese, dill, and a single lemon. Her hands try to balance the ingredients in her hands as she moves to the island. She sets them down.

The greek yogurt has a small divot in its surface, from the day Charlotte tried it, saying something about antibiotic qualities. The doctor promptly put the cover back on and vowed to take antibiotic pills for the rest of her life if it meant never eating that again. Cordelia laughed and mocked Charlotte’s lack of food tasting expertise. She never tried it, though, secretly trusting her doctor’s instincts.

She scoops out some greek yogurt and plops it into the food processor. Eyeballing the amount of yogurt, Cordelia adds in another scoop.

Charlotte led Cordelia into Whizzer’s small hospital room, closing the door behind her. The doctor was tasked with getting Jason from school once she got a call from Trina and Mendel saying they were on their way. So it was just Cordelia, Marvin, and Whizzer.

A knife is needed to cut open the tough foil package of cream cheese. She uses the knife to cut off a portion of the cream cheese. Her finger slides across the flat surface of the blade, pushing cream cheese into the food processor. She uses a hand cloth to wipe off the excess.

Cordelia remembers flinching when she saw Whizzer. But, he and Marvin were too busy, caught up in a conversation. They didn’t notice her. 

She adds a few sprigs of dill into the food processor.

He looked near death, face pale and large bags under his eyes. His lips were lighter than usual, a color of a faded tan rather than their original pinker tone. His cheeks were sunken slightly and his arms looked thinner than she had ever seen them.

A few extra sprigs of dill are accidentally dropped in. Cordelia doesn’t have the energy to pick them out. 

Cordelia put on a bright smile and walked over to the two, presenting her soup. They welcomed her. She remembers following Marvin’s lead of encouraging Whizzer. It didn’t help the sick man at all, though. He smiled, but there was a tinge of hopelessness and knowledge of their dishonesty to it.

She wipes away a few tears forming at the corner of her eyes with the back of her wrist. The recipe says to only add in half a lemon’s worth of juice, but Cordelia adds all of it. She needs something to crush, to feel.

The lemon’s unwielding skin breaks under her nails as she clenches it in her fists above the food processor. Small streams of sour juice cascade down her fingers and into the greek yogurt, cream cheese, and far too much dill mixture. She adjusts her grip, squeezing the fruit even harder, forearms shaking.

Whizzer took a sip of Cordelia’s soup. She tried not to watch him, but out of the corner of her eye she saw him grimace in pain and set the cup down. Charlotte said something about his throat, something about lesions. She can’t help him. She can’t do the one fucking thing she’s good at to help her dying friend. 

And she’s not even good at it.

Cordelia throws the lemon’s remains into the trashcan, rattling the metal container and making it nearly tip over. Her face twists into a frown and she finds herself letting out a loud sob, something guttural, from her tired soul. But, before she can have a proper meltdown, the oven dings.

Trina and Mendel rushed into the room, startling the occupants. Cordelia noticed the same flinch in them as they saw Whizzer. They kept it under better control than Cordelia, though.

The bread is slightly burnt, darker brown at the edges. She places the tray on the island on top of a cork circle. 

Trina brought a flower and Mendel some get well cards from his younger patients. At least those would make Whizzer feel loved, rather than burn his throat.

She snaps the food processor’s lid into place. A loud buzzing sound emits from the processor when she presses the power button. Her eyes focus on the dill being shredded, tossed around in a sea of cream cheese and lumpy greek yogurt. It’s small leaves are torn apart and interspersed into the creamy substance, until finally the mixture becomes one cohesive medium, green flecks of dill in a smooth, white spread.

Cordelia laughed at Mendel’s joke, understanding his mission to lighten the tense mood that had overcome the room at their entrance and subsequent flinches. No one else laughed, but there were less frowns. 

The recipe had said to let the bread cool for a few minutes. So, Cordelia goes to the fridge and grabs the butcher’s paper wrapped salmon, unwrapping it as she steps back to the counter. The flesh of the salmon is a satisfying pinky-orange. She smiles lightly and cuts the salmon into thin slices large enough to cover the slices of bread.

The room went silent when Jason and Charlotte walked in, the first words coming out of Jason’s mouth being an abrupt comment on how terrible Whizzer looked. She tried to laugh it off and pass around her food, but Jason had already picked up on the mood of the room and offered Whizzer a game of chess. Whizzer laughed and agreed. Cordelia’s eyebrows furrowed at how easily he could diffuse a situation.

She begins to assemble the small hors d’oeuvres, spreading some of the dill yogurt onto the bread carefully with a spoon. A slice of salmon on top of that, another small dollop of the dill yogurt mixture on the center of the salmon. A sprinkle of salt to finish it off.

Everyone had been talking amongst themselves. Jason and Whizzer playing chess, Marvin, Trina, and Mendel having their own discussion about the bar mitzvah, and Charlotte holding Cordelia by the waist, whispering sweet things in her ear, knowing how stressed the blonde was, and distracting herself from her own stress. Cordelia remembers Charlotte’s voice catching when Whizzer fell limp. Remembers everyone looking at him, until it was clear he had just fallen asleep.

“Hey babe?” Charlotte calls into the apartment, having just gotten back from the hospital to pick Cordelia up, “You ready to go?”

Cordelia turns around, tray of burnt and over salted and over dilled hors d’oeurves in her hands, “Yeah,” she says, grinning widely at the other woman, “let’s go.”

The sad excuse of a chef knows her food tastes awful. She knows it’s too salty, too toasted.

But, if she has to plaster a smile on her face when she’s being torn apart on the inside, then they can force equally painful smiles on their faces as they eat her disgusting food, giving her fake compliments.

So she is going to hand out her hors d’oeurves to everyone and smile at them as they chew through the sour, salty food she serves them. 

She is going to smile so goddamned hard.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I pulled the food she is making from this recipe if you want to make it lol: [Smoked Salmon Crostini](http://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/2012/12/smoked-salmon-crostini/%0A)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and please comment! It makes my day to know what you guys think :)
> 
> Reach me on [tumblr](https://courtroses.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/bwayobviously)!


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